Over at the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal true crime and mystery author Harold Schechter shares his list of the top five books written about sensational murder trials. The piece is called “Killer Stories: Sensational murder trials are at their most transfixing in these works.”
The top five are:
1. “The Murder of Helen Jewett” by Patricia Cline Cohen (Knopf, 1998).
2. “Dead Certainties” by Simon Schama (Knopf, 1991).
3. “The Minister and the Choir Singer” by William M. Kunstler (William Morrow, 1964)
4. “Compulsion” by Meyer Levin (Simon & Schuster, 1956).
5. “Kidnap” by George Waller (Dial, 1961).
Schecther provides a one paragraph synopsis of each choice.
I’m not sure if Vincent Bugliosi’s account of the Charles Manson murders, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders was ineligible for the list because the author was the prosecutor in the case but that one would be at the top of my list.